cjvlang

Bathrobe's "Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese Language Site" (aka cjvlang.com) is an armchair excursion into three fascinating languages
of the Orient -- now expanded to four with the addition of Mongolian.

It will take you on a trip through the familiar and the
exotic -- the way Harry Potter has been translated into these totally
non-European languages, where they got their names for the days of
the week,
and of course, the nature of the scripts the languages are written
in. The journey will give you glimpses of history, a close-up of the
workings of culture, and the thrill of discovering the unexpected.

You won't need special equipment to enjoy the site --
just a healthy curiosity about language and cultures. To make Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian as accessible as French, Spanish, or other more familiar
languages, pronunciation and meaning are shown alongside the Chinese or Mongolian
characters. (The site has largely been converted to Unicode.)

There is also a section
of Photos, which contains material about Oriental stone lions,
and other stray matters...

Before we begin, a bit of background...

Thumbnail background: Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese
were originally complete 'strangers' belonging to different language
families. Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
The affiliation of Japanese is still under dispute, although it is
often assigned to something called 'Altaic'. Mongolian has also been consigned to 'Altaic', but the very existence of Altaic is fairly dubious. Vietnamese belongs to Mon-Khmer (although
it has also been argued that it should, like Chinese, belong to Sino-Tibetan).

China
is one of the world's oldest civilisations, with a written culture
stretching back considerably more than 4,000 years. Roughly 2,000
years ago (give or take a few hundred years), the less developed Vietnamese
and Japanese cultures came into China's orbit, whether willingly
or unwillingly, creating what might be termed an 'East Asian cultural
sphere'. (The other modern member is Korea, which is not dealt with here.)

Mongolia holds a completely different position vis-à-vis China. It is the remainder of one of the many steppe peoples throughout history that harrassed and in some cases conquered China. Later the Mongols were brought under the control of another northern ethnic group, the Manchus, and served as junior partners in ruling their Chinese Empire. When this empire fell, the northern part of the Mongols broke away from China with Russian help, leaving their southern compatriots under Chinese sovereignty.

In modern times, the impact of the Western world has
brought about huge changes. The Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese cultures have abandoned large
parts of their traditional way of life. Linguistically, there was at
first considerable interchange among them as they met the Western challenge,
but in the 20th century they began moving apart. In its fascination
with the West, Japan turned its back on Chinese culture. Vietnam completely
abandoned Chinese characters. The Mongols are divided between the increasingly sinicised Inner Mongolians and the staunchly anti-Chinese country of Mongolia.

Comparing China, Japan, and Vietnam today, all this is apparent - the
original strong identities of the three languages, the shared Chinese
background built up during more than a millennium of contact, and the
adaptation to Western influence in modern times. Mongolian, on the other hand, is a language that has never borrowed from China in the massive and systematic manner typical of the Sinosphere countries.

What you will find on this site:

1. Days
of the Week in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Mongolian - Why should three
East Asian languages that are often so similar in vocabulary be so different
in naming the days of the week? And how is Mongolian related to the rest? At first it all seems rather easy,
but the more you look, the more fascinating it becomes.

5. CJV
Writing Systems - A description of the CJV writing systems which
attempts to cover what I consider the essence -- less about the exotic
forms of the characters and more about how they are used to write
the language.

6. Spicks & Specks - Miscellaneous
items that don't belong anywhere else: 'Year of the Sheep or Year of
the Goat?', 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', a sign encouraging people
to flush the toilet, translation of the Chinese word fengqing,
'Mind the Gap' in Japanese and Cantonese, the perils of translating
via a third language (in this case, Chinese).

I've done a certain amount of background
research for this site, mainly to prevent gross errors of fact. However,
my information is neither exhaustive nor authoritative. Much is from
dictionaries. I would be delighted to receive corrections or further
information.